Gaza Officials Publish List of Those Killed in Israeli Assault. The First 14 Pages Are Babies
Editor’s Note: I don’t know how to weigh the considerable danger of a second Trump presidency against the genocide of infants in Gaza. Genocide can’t be just another issue about which each presidential candidate has a position (“She’s good on infrastructure, the economy and the environment, but bad on genocide, so her positions are mostly good”). No, genocide is a whole different order of things. People of good will can reasonably differ on issues, but no person of good will can argue for or conceivably justify genocide. The Genocide of Infants now going on in Gaza is not something about which a person of conscience should feel free to mull or vacillate. And no one should imagine that a vote for Trump or Harris is not a vote for genocide. Sorry, it just is. By the way, if you have time, click on the Lancet (“experts believe”) link at the end of the second paragraph below. Lancet makes a plausible case for the true number of dead in Gaza being about 186,000, nearly a third of whom, according to some estimates, are children. [Don]
“This is a genocide of children,” said Heba Gowayed, a sociology professor at the City University of New York’s Hunter College.
Jake Johnson
Sep 16, 2024
Gaza’s Ministry of Health on Sunday released a document containing the names and ages of Palestinians killed by Israel’s assault since the Hamas-led October 7 attack, an incomplete list that nonetheless runs 649 pages—the first 14 of which are filled with the names of babies.
The list, published to the health ministry’s Telegram account, is limited to those for whom Gaza officials had information—over 34,000 people—and the count stops on August 31. The current death toll, according to the ministry, is close to 42,000, but experts believe that figure is likely a gross undercount.
The new document is a testament to the devastating impact Israel’s U.S.-backed war has had on Gaza’s population, particularly children. According to Gaza officials, children make up a third of those killed since October 7.
“This is a genocide of children. 14 pages of babies. Babies,” Heba Gowayed, a sociology professor at the City University of New York’s Hunter College, wrote on social media in response to the list. “This is nothing short of an attempt to expunge a people.”
The Gaza Health Ministry’s statistics are considered credible by independent watchdogs and have been cited internally by U.S. officials, notwithstanding President Joe Biden’s public questioning of the data. In June, the U.S. House approved an amendment that would bar the State Department from using statistics from the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH).
But after examining an earlier list of names published by the ministry, the research group Airwars found “a high correlation between the official MoH data and what Palestinian civilians reported online.” The group acknowledged that gathering data has become increasingly difficult “as Gaza’s health infrastructure has been decimated by the war.”
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote that the newly published list highlights “what differentiates Gaza.”
“It’s a genocide of children since their proportion is unprecedented,” Parsi wrote, adding that the “U.S., U.K., and Germany arm and support the genocide.”
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Excerpt from a Mondoweiss article:
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide? The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
Aaron Bushnell, American Air Force Serviceman
(Died at age 25 protesting genocide in Gaza)
